Archives for 2004

Atrios and the folks at Crooked Timber have finally found a statement in which they can not detect any nuance. Of course, this binary construct is of their own making, and, also not surprising, is an attempt to launch another silly attack on Bush. The issue now, again of their own creation, is that Bush is against free speech.

Now, a fair-minded individual might take Bush’s blanket condemnation of the advertising by 527’s as what it is- an expression of a desire to remove the influence of anonymous and pseudo-anonymous attack ads. Of course, this is an election year,so fair-minded individuals are few and far between. What is in abundance, however, are hysterics and histrionics.

UggaBugga leads the charge, withthe folks at Crooked Timber following up with a variation of the most hackneyed phrase in political history (can we just charge them with a violation of Godwin’s Law and please move on):

‘First They Came For the Grocers’

Blech. Clearly Bush is not against free speech, and clearly an attempt to regulate soft money contributions by ‘shadowy groups’ is nowhere near the same as the Jewish internment, Kristallnacht, and the Holocaust. Such subtleties are missed however, but it is not surprising. This is, after all, the same sphere of the body politic that has been saying Bush is Hitler for the last four years. What did you expect?

Second, let’s all try not to break out into hysterics by the audacity of this position. In the past week, the Democrats have attempted to sue to halt free speech activities, have attempted to shut down the operation of the independent press, have written threatening letters to television networks, and have had their surrogates write threatening letters to stores selling speech products that they do not like. First they came for your sense of irony, and I am not even going to mention the Democrats caging their protesters at the DNC and doing everything they can to keep Ralph Nader off the ballot anywhere.

Similarly disingenuous are attempts to point out that Republicans have in the past been benefactors of 527’s. The entire point of the McCain-Feingold CFR was to stop the abuses and misuses on both sides of the political aisle. Am I the only one who remembers the plaintive wails of John McCain in front of any live microphone, bemoaning the fact that all this ‘unregulated money has corrupted us all.’

Furthermore, were Bush/Cheney supporters to single-handedly stop using 527’s, it would be tantamount to unilateral disarmament- which, ifyou think for a second, is precisely the rallying cry the Democrats use very time they are up to no good. ‘Why- we must do all these things we say we are against- we can’t unilaterally disarm and give up the fight.’ And so on ad nauseum.

Was I in favor of McCain-Feingold? No. Was I in favor of any attempts to regulate free speech? NO, and neither were the majority of my Republican brethren. In fact, you might do a quick google on Mitch McConnell and Campaign Finance Reform, and find out what Atrios and his compatriots on the left had to say about his ‘obstructionist’ attitude towards cleaning up the political climate in years past.

At any rate, it is amusing that while the left-wing bloggers are seizing upon the ‘Bush is against free speech meme,’ it is apparently lost on them that their leaders still believe Bush’s position is not hard-line enough:

The Kerry campaign said Bush did not go far enough. “The moment of truth came and went and the president still could not bring himself to do the right thing,” said Kerry’s vice presidential running mate, Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina. “George Bush needs to take responsibility and demand that the ad come off the air.”

The Kerry/Edwards campaign then went forward with a commercial fradulently claiming the Swift Vets are a part of the Bush campaign. Apparently, Edwards wants Bush to condemn only those ads that don’t puppet the Kerry/Edwards line, leaving all other 527’s in place with their hundreds of millions of dollars to attack Bush/Cheney, or he wants Bush to condemn all ads and 527’s and doubly condemn those that are mean to Kerry/Edwards. You take your pick.

The former option dictates that you must recognize that the Democrats are hypocrites, the latter that they are just idiots. I would suggest they are a combination of both, and I expect we will have to wait 24 hours for another Kerry/Edwards poll to dictate the new talking points. At that time, we should expect the left-wing of the blogosphere and the Kerry/Edwards leadership to be back on the same sheet of music.

Democratic DilemmaPost + Comments (19)

This appeared in yesterday’s Boston Globe:

IMAGINE IF supporters of Bill Clinton had tried in 1996 to besmirch the military record of his opponent, Bob Dole. After all, Dole was given a Purple Heart for a leg scratch probably caused, according to one biographer, when a hand grenade thrown by one of his own men bounced off a tree. And while the serious injuries Dole sustained later surely came from German fire, did the episode demonstrate heroism on Dole’s part or a reckless move that ended up killing his radioman and endangering the sergeant who dragged Dole off the field?

The truth, according to many accounts, is that Dole fought with exceptional bravery and deserves the nation’s gratitude. No one in 1996 questioned that record. Any such attack on behalf of Clinton, an admitted Vietnam draft dodger, would have been preposterous.

No need to imagine. From 1996:

The truth about Dole’s war record is considerably less than awe-inspiring. Yet the myth endures, and with the candidate running on the contrast between his and Clinton’s military record, his campaign isn’t eager to give a more accurate account. Dole, at the behest of his handlers, is less reticent about his service than in the past, but he mainly speaks about his wound and rehabilitation. He has passed up several opportunities to correct the exaggerated versions in biographies, and in the case of his self-wounding has even approved a sanitized account in which his maladroitly hurled grenade goes unnoted. Journalists continue to portray him as a hero, winner of two Bronze Stars. Joe Klein, for example, writes in Newsweek that Dole knows “what guns do. He also knows what politicians do, which is rarely anything quite so dramatic as leading an army into battle.” Such attempts to make political capital out of Dole’s war service go beyond the respect due him for the role he played as a soldier with the 10th Mountain Division.

From 1992:

What really happened at Chichi Jima will never finally be resolved. Were the men really dead when Bush jumped? Did one man parachute out? Why did the intelligence report say one thing and the Finback log another? And why have Bush’s versions changed over time? Bush’s experience in the Good War was more tortured and his accounts more tortuous than he now admits.

“I don’t want to think about it,” said Chester Mierzejewski. “I don’t want to get involved politically.” Still, he sees the attacks on Clinton as cynical in the light of what he has come to believe about the event of long ago. “I knew two guys who would be glad if George Bush had been a draft-dodger,” he told me.

What we do know, in the end, is that terrible things happen in wartime; that the young Bush was consumed with doubt and pain; that the older Bush has presented a simple, unambiguous, but contradicting, story; and that he has directed his campaign to project onto Clinton’s youthful grapplings with a very different war the harsh image of the evader.

Dear Democrats ‘outraged’ over the Swift Boat Vets (who unlike Blumenthal and Ellis, actually where there),

STFU.

Regards,

John Cole

(NRO links via the Instapundit)

‘Kerrying’ the DNC’s WaterPost + Comments (11)

Those whiny Democrats- they are never satisfied. Once again, I guess for the terminally stupid, Bush has re-stated that he does not support he Swift Boats for Veterans commercal, nor any other run by 527’s:

President Bush on Monday denounced campaign commercials aired by outside groups, including an ad that accuses John Kerry of lying about his combat record in Vietnam.

“That ad and every other ad” run by such groups have no place in the campaign, Bush said when asked about the commercial sponsored by Swift Boat Veterans For Truth that has roiled the race for the White House.

Asked directly whether his Democratic rival for the presidency had lied, Bush said, “I think Senator Kerry served admirably and he ought to be proud of his record.”

Since this was not clear enough for the Democrats and the press, he elaborated, speaking slowly so the media an Kerry/Edwards supporters would understand:

In Texas at his ranch, Bush said, “I don’t think we ought to have 527s,” a reference to the outside groups that have poured millions of dollars over the past year into attack ads. Bush himself has been a main target of ads costing some $60 million. Bush said all of the ads should be stopped.

“That means that ad,” he said, referring to the anti-Kerry ad, “and every other ad.”

The anti-Kerry ad, no longer running but much publicized in news accounts, says Kerry didn’t deserve his Purple Hearts, lied to get his Bronze Star and Silver Star and unfairly branded all veterans with his 1971 congressional testimony about atrocities in Vietnam.

“I couldn’t be more plain about it,” Bush said “I hope my opponent joins me in condemning these activities of the 527s.”

Bush can keep hoping, because they aren’t going to, despite the disgusting connections between 527’s and the DNC and the Kerry/Edwards campign. In fact, not only are they not going to denounce all 527’s as Bush has, they are going to continue to lie about what they have condemned. Right now, the Kerry campaign claims to have condemned specific ads by MoveOn.Org. The record, of course, as it almost always is with the Democrats, just the opposite:

Again, for those of you keeping score at home: John Kerry initially condemned the Moveon.org ad that maliciously floats disproven charges concerning George Bush

Never Satisfied: The Lying LiarsPost + Comments (12)